The movie version of Horns starring Harry Potter wasn't bad either. Heart Shaped Box was a book that I picked up at the Goodwill shop, had no idea who Joe Hill was. I commented on my last forum that he seemed to look up to Stephen King as an author and got laughed at.
He’s interesting. He started doing horror, believe. The Terror is a historical horror novel based on an actual arctic expedition. AMC recently made a mini series of it. The only book of his I haven’t got into was Drood, which was supposed to be about the final novel of Dickens and is written in that style.
I asked all my Facebook friends for book suggestions about a year ago, and Joe Hill came highly recommended by a couple of people. I read the synopses of a few and commented that his jackets read almost like nineties Stephen King. Somehow it still didn't occur to me even after a friend said, "Haha, yeah, but I think he sticks his endings better than his dad." I read it on his Wikipedia page later and felt very silly. I'm reading a lot of both of them and Peter Clines right now, partially because I want to hone that natural tone in wildly unnatural circumstances that they pull off so well for my WIP. Also, they're just damn good books.
I like Hill as well. NSFR8TU, or however he spells it, is on my shelf. I haven’t read that one yet though.
Still working on Asimov's Nightfall and Other Stories. He isn't boring, like the Foundation Trilogy got.
I'm looking forward to that one. There are two versions. In the U.S. it's NOS4A2, and in the U.K. it's NOS4R2, because Brits pronounce "R" as "ah", which is closer to nosferatu than a long "A", I guess.
I'm currently reading Tarzan of the Apes, by Edgar Rice Burroughs. The original, although I don't think I've ever actually watched a full adaptation, he's such a part of my general cultural background that I thought I should have a go (especially since it's public domain and free). Addendum: TMW you're reading his initial description of the Africans and thinking "Hey, that's not too racist, sure, we wouldn't use exactly the same word choice now, but--OHMYGOD, nope...just nope." Spoiler: Racist language Okay, I don't know much about how various groups of native Africans dressed, decorated, or armed themselves, and "wool" wouldn't be my first choice, but I'm willing to take on faith that Burroughs was simply describing a group of Africans. Not too bad. Again, I've seen references to people doing this. Don't know for sure if it's true, and the same geographical caveats apply, but he was writing considerably before Wikipedia, so... yeah. Ah fuck you, Eddie. And it's going to get worse once we learn that a White Man, even one raised by actual apes, is far nobler in the mind and spirit than any human native of the Dark Continent. Still going to finish it.
I had a similar reaction reading the first Barsoom book where the inciting incident is John Carter getting attacked by Indians 'out to murder everything white' (paraphrased) in their terrain.
Last year I read Lord of the Dynamos, a short story by H.G. Wells. The descriptions of the African were cringe-worthy, and the messed up part was that there wasn't even an ounce of hatred involved. Everything he said would have been considered progressive in its praise and entirely science based at the time. Unfortunately, those sciences were eugenics and phrenology! A couple of years ago, I put together a few hundred songs for my then two-year-old's new music player. I had to skip a number of songs I would have thought were fine before I heard them again. I had entirely forgotten that Davy Crockett "Fought single-handed through the Injun War till the Creeks was whipped an' peace was in store." or that Pecos Bill, God help us, did this: "While a tribe of painted Indians did a wardance Pecos started shooting up their little game He gave those redskins such a shakeup That they jumped out of their makeup That's how the Painted Desert got it's name" How many generations of American kids thought that was okay? No wonder the American genocide went so unrecognized for so long. They sold it in kids' songs!
Abercrombie's First Law trilogy is a huge favourite of mine as well. He turns so many tropes on their heads! And makes me smile, as well. I've read the whole trilogy several times.
Exactly! Those books were where I first encountered such widespread, wholesale deconstruction of tropes (well before I quite knew what tropes were and what it meant to deconstruct them) and, well, I just ate it up. And to think I almost threw The Blade Itself aside in a huff, on the very first page no less, for the crime of "seeming entirely generic" (I have since learned the wisdom in extending the benefit of the doubt). On top of that, old Joe makes me laugh like few other writers can; I had to put Red Country down to hoot for a full minute when I read what Lamb had named his oxen. Funny bugger, is Joe Ambercrombie.
Deciding between TBR's I found while organizing the wall o' bookshelves: Intimate Voices from the First World War by Palmer and Wallis, Marjorie Morningstar by Herman Wouk, and The King of California by Arax and Wartzman. The King of California is a 430-page tiny-font monster plus 100 pages of footnotes, so I'll probably attack that one for the challenge. God help me....I'm dyslexic. ETA: Just put it in my favorite reading place, so...challenge accepted!
I am reading now the three books: The Spook's Apprentice (which I finished), Curse (which I am currently reading) and Secret (which I will read when I finish the second book). I am enjoying these series. I look forward to reading more books.
